INTERVIEWER: I think you need to stop worrying so much about Chancellor Lehrer and start worrying more about yourself, Dara. You were missing for six months. Then you come back ... you hook up with these terrorists ... and you try to assassinate your own father. This could end very badly for you if you don’t start talking.
DARA: He’s not my father.
INTERVIEWER: Why did you try to kill your father, Dara?
DARA: He’snot—
INTERVIEWER: Where were you the past six months?
DARA: Does it even matter?
INTERVIEWER: You might as well start being honest with us, Dara. Your friend Noam Álvaro already told us everything. Noam’s a very cooperative young man.
[Dara starts laughing. He can’t seem to stop.]
INTERVIEWER: You’re obviously a very sweet girl, Bethany. It’s clear you just got in over your head. Maybe if you can help us clear up a few of these questions, we—
BETHANY: Oh, shut the fuck up.
BETHANY’S MOTHER:Bethany Glennis, language!
BETHANY: You too, Mom. All you care about is whether my arrest is going to reflect badly on your medical career.
INTERVIEWER: Let’s all take some deep breaths. Bethany, maybe—
BETHANY: Go to hell.
INTERVIEWER: Why would you throw away such a potentially illustrious career in the military ... forthis? I understand Dara was your friend, and that he and the chancellor didn’t get along. But most family feuds stop short of murder.
AMES: Yeah, Lehrer still seemed pretty alive when we last saw him, so I dunno about this whole murder business.
INTERVIEWER: Attempted murder, then.
AMES: Is that what we’re calling it?
INTERVIEWER: You tell me. What would you call it, Carter?
AMES: Retribution.
INTERVIEWER: ... with Noam Álvaro at Carolinia National University Medical Center intensive care unit. Mr. Álvaro is a minor ward of the state; therefore, an advocate as well as Erin Chen, Mr. Álvaro’s attorney, are both present. Mr. Álvaro, would you like to explain the events of March 14?
NOAM: I’m happy to explain everything.
CHEN: Noam—
NOAM: Under one condition. There are over a hundred files on this flopcell. Read them first.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SEVEN
NOAM
The investigation stretched out for weeks, the media consumed in a sudden storm of rumor and speculation—and then facts, testimonies, a headline in bold black type:
THE INDICTMENT OF CALIX LEHRER
After reliable information emerged proving Calix Lehrer was himself responsible for infecting Carolinian and Atlantian citizens with a weaponized strain of the magic virus, Lehrer was indicted today in international court on charges of war crimes ...
None of it felt real. Fifteen days in the hospital blurred into a featureless landscape of pain and suppressants and steroids washing through Noam’s veins. Then the deafeningemptinesswhen he woke the eighth day and reached out with his power, and all that equipment keeping him alive, all the computer screens at the nurses’ station, the phones and holoreaders and security cameras—it was all blank space, an open wound where Noam’s magic used to live.
